Ken, have you ever heard of Mel Tappan? He was a well-known survival writer in the 80s.

He agrees with you that a smaller town, of 5000 people max, which is predominately farming, not industrial in a rural area is the ideal location to live in. You can download his writings here:
https://giltweasel.com/stuff/Tappan%20on%20Survival.pdf (begin at page 24)

What he suggests is what he calls an "abandoned farmstead":

"If wilderness nomadics are one extreme of living off the land, then full-time farming is the other, and it too has its drawbacks. For one thing, making a living solely from working a small farm is so labor-intensive and requires so much skill that few people succeed in the attempt. Under survival conditions, of course, you would need only to produce enough to feed your family and, perhaps, a bit more for barter, but even that modest goal involves considerably more knowledge and work than the uninitiated may imagine. Insects, animals, thieves and weather can all thwart your plans even if you know when, what and where to plant, how to cultivate, rotate and keep your land fertile without the use of commercial fertilizers, and all the rest.

Fortunately, there is a middle ground between these two extremes of seeking long-term subsistence from the land: a thoughtful combination of foraging for wild food and limited small-scale agriculture. Although unusual, this approach is practical -- as I can personally affirm from almost three years of experience with it -- and it can save you a great deal of money when you purchase the land for your retreat.

There is often a greater abundance of food more easily available on an abandoned farmstead in good game country than can be found on ten times the acreage in true wilderness. Yet the most expensive farmland is usually well kept and completely cleared to maximize its use for cultivated crops. It offers little in the way of cover for game, and hardy nutritious plants such as dandelions, lamb's quarters, Jerusalem artichokes and thistles, which flourish without care in most parts of the country, have been uprooted and burned as unwanted weeds. That is a logical approach for the full-time farmer whose eye is on developing cash crops for market, but for the survivalist who is concerned with producing the surest source of nutrition for his family with the least amount of work, it is a serious mistake.

An optimal retreat site for the survivalist forager might be a poorly maintained or abandoned small farm, a portion of which had once been cultivated but which had never been entirely cleared of trees. You might even want to add additional brush piles for small game cover, and, if a suitable one does not already exist, you should consider digging a pond. Nothing else will enhance the food-producing potential of your land as much, even if you don't bother -- as you should -- to stock it with fish. Turtles and frogs will appear as if by magic, deer and other large game may be attracted if the terrain and certain other conditions are right, flocks of migratory birds will probably come in if you are near a flyway and a variety of edible small game such as muskrat will undoubtedly take up residence there. The pond doesn't need to be more than a few feet deep unless you should require a great deal of irrigation water from it, but the surface area should be as large as you can reasonably make it, for maximum effect. A two-acre pond on an eight- to ten acre parcel is none too large. Surrounded by a start of such nourishing edibles as wild rice, cattails, berry bushes and the like, then stocked with trout, catfish or bass and bluegills -- depending on location and climate -- such a pond alone could provide substantially all of the food necessary for a small family."

In regard to understanding potential natural disasters where you live, almost every county in the US has a hazard mitigation plan for the purpose of qualifying for grants with FEMA. A lot are online; the rest are hard copies with the emergency management director. They should have a risk analysis and a strategy for reducing risk. Some are good and some are very generic. It might be worth hunting yours down.

From time to time, after a major disaster, you might hear about "ham radio" being used to coordinate response operations. This typically involves the ARES organization, which is all volunteers, organized at the lowest level by county, with a hierarchical structure up to nation-wide. If your area is visited by disaster annually, once every 10 years, or once every 100 years, the preparatory activities that an ARES group performs can give you insight into local risks and response plans. Here in mid-Maryland, we consider tornadoes, hurricanes, civil unrest, brush fires, and pandemic (the last, with a remarkable lack of foresight). If you've ever thought about "ham radio" as a tool to help in trying times, check out arrl.org/ares. Just having a radio won't do you much good, if it only sits on the shelf, but an active ARES group will conduct exercises and public service events to help you learn how to communicate effectively.

If the idea of taking a test to get a license to use the radio puts you off, bear in mind that it's not much different from taking a driving test, to get a driver's license. You need to know how to operate safely and cooperatively in a shared-resource environment. Study guides and classes are freely available (as well as sold). (The ability to send and receive Morse Code is no longer a requirement.)